


Your Love is a Guitar and I Sold It

by mytimehaspassed



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Murder, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:52:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Istanbul, Napoleon replaces the bland hotel room painting with a stolen Kandinsky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Love is a Guitar and I Sold It

**YOUR LOVE IS A GUITAR AND I SOLD IT**  
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.  
Illya/Gaby/Napoleon; Illya/OMC; Napoleon/OC(s)  
**WARNINGS** : Violence; murder; graphic torture; involuntary drug use  
**NOTES** : Spoilers for the movie

 

**I**

 

In Istanbul, Napoleon replaces the bland hotel room painting with a stolen Kandinsky. Illya only notices because Gaby remarks on how ugly the colors are, how the modern, severe lines don’t match the wallpaper at all, and he stares at it for one moment, two, before turning to Napoleon, aghast. 

Napoleon doesn’t smile, but it’s a near thing, his sharp teeth and pink mouth and the flick of his tongue in the corner of his cheek as he says, “The Russian avant-garde has always been a little too socialist for my taste. Don’t you think so, Peril?”

Illya’s hands start to tremble. 

***

This is the first present. 

It’s not the last. 

 

**II**

 

In Cote d’Azur, Gaby finds three loose diamonds nestled in the folds of her purse. She drops them into a glass of champagne at breakfast, watches them catch in the sunlight, watches them sparkle through the glass. 

In Bavaria, there is a gold-plated chessboard that Illya touches delicately, silently, picking up one of the rooks and feeling the weight in his hand, the carefully constructed balance. The board has never been touched, it’s pieces unmarred, unloved, and Illya thinks of that most of all when he throws them one by one off the hotel balcony, listening for the crack of gravity on the ground below. 

Luxembourg City is a new car, and Gaby squeals when she sees it on the street, her hands hovering above the fresh paint job, the bright cherry-colored red, not touching, never touching. Napoleon reaches into his pocket for the keys, but Gaby grabs for his arm first, shakes her head, her lips close enough to his chin that he feels her breath tickle the underside of his neck.

She says, “No,” and then again. No, Napoleon. 

Her sunglasses are wide and dark and as he looks down at her a stray piece of hair curls on his forehead and Illya feels small watching them, feels like an intruder. 

As always, Gaby is the voice of reason. No amount of explaining away the arrival of a brand new Lotus Elite will soothe the targets, will cement their cover. This is not the car of a timid secretary for the European Coal and Steel Community, this is not the car of a lowly chop shop girl. She looks longingly at the butter-soft leather interior before leading them both away, one arm linked through each of theirs. 

The next morning, there is an empty, dry spot on the pavement where the car used to be. 

 

**III**

 

Waverly sends them to Moscow for a briefcase. 

Napoleon’s Russian is impeccable and Gaby can scam herself around a few phrases from the dog-eared, well-worn language book she picked up in a dusty bookshop in San Francisco, but Illya is the one who is playing the distraction. He accidentally bumps into the mark at a bar, apologies profusely in broken English, takes too long wiping up the spilled vodka on the mark’s sleeve, too long to remove his hands. The man is politely British, buys Illya a drink, and they spend hours talking chess and old, brittle paperbacks that can only be found in the West. 

Napoleon had taught him how to smile, how to look interested, how to nod slowly when the man invites Illya up to his room, how to catch his bottom lip between his teeth and look down through dark eyelashes, baring his neck slightly, how to let the mark imagine his mouth in the soft spot beneath Illya’s chin. Napoleon had taught him this in London on a rainy Saturday, Gaby sleeping off a hangover in the back bedroom of Napoleon’s flat, her arm slung low over her eyes. 

Illya had protested at first. In Russia, his missions were centered around tailing, around fighting, and although never short of espionage, he was never put to use like Napoleon, night after night with wives or mistresses of dignitaries, with men who know how to keep secrets. Illya had neither the training nor skill to play the whore. 

“Come here, Peril,” Napoleon had said softly, and Illya - already past the point of no return for this team, already the protector, the martyr - had come, standing tall and tense. Napoleon had moved Illya with ease, his hands firm but gentle, positioning him into a more submissive stance, and Illya had felt exposed, raw, and Napoleon had laughed, a husky, low laugh that had shot straight through Illya like an arrow. 

“You can’t be the aggressor,” Napoleon had said, tilting Illya’s chin. “Not with a man like this. He’s going to be looking for any reason to kick you out of bed, he’ll be too scared of blackmail.”

Illya had opened his mouth, but Napoleon had closed it for him, two firm fingers on his lips. 

“I know,” he had said, his eyes bright and warm. “This is not the Russian way.”

Illya had nodded, Napoleon’s fingers still on his mouth. He had wanted to open his lips then, just for a taste. 

“He needs to be the one in control. You’re giving him what he wants, and he’s giving you what you want.” Napoleon had smiled, but it never reached his eyes. “In this game, everyone wins.”

“And after we have briefcase?” Illya had asked. 

(After he has the briefcase, when Illya drives straight to Domodedovo Airport and spends the entire flight to Sverdlovsk replaying the night before in his mind, the swollen kisses and the way the man had looked up at Illya and smiled. Afterwards, when Illya hands the briefcase over to Waverly and Waverly gives him a tight, appreciative smile, and Gaby slips a small hand into his and leans into his bulk, smelling like the expensive French perfume Napoleon had given to her on Christmas. Afterwards, when Napoleon slides a bottle of scotch across the hotel bar and Illya drinks most of it and feels like he’s failed somehow, even though the mission was a success, feels like even though he was never trained in this, never shown how to do what he’s done, he feels like he’s following in his mother’s footsteps.

Afterwards, when he vomits in the bathroom and Napoleon runs a cool, wet washcloth across his forehead and Gaby tries to lift him up and into bed, but can’t quite carry him, afterwards when Illya slips under the covers and they both turn to go and he says, weakly, softly, “No,” and “Please,” and they both look at each other with dark eyes and then back at him, and then stay, stay in the room as he falls asleep, it feels like he’s letting go of everything he’s ever known. 

It feels like he’s no longer who he used to be.)

But Napoleon had only shrugged, a lifetime of never thinking about the consequences. “Then we go home.”

 

 

**IV**

 

In New York City, Gaby finds a Paco Rabanne cocktail dress laid out on her bed. 

She wears it once, only once, with dark-colored lipstick and gold jewelry and a Louis Vuitton clutch, and Napoleon beams when he sees her, kissing the top of her knuckles gently, making an unmistakably obscene joke that Gaby rolls her eyes at. They go out to an underground jazz club and Illya keeps blushing every time she brushes her hands on his arm, his shoulder, his knee, and she laughs when he does it, which makes him blush harder, his accent thickening with the husk of his voice, the wine he swallows like water. 

It’s the first night that they kiss, Illya turning to her when Napoleon leaves to get another bottle from the bar, and Gaby leaning in because she just can’t take it anymore, her palms on Illya’s cheeks, warm, bringing him close enough to her that they’re breathing the same air, his lips cool, slick on hers. He’s gentle with her, as always, his fingers finding the pinched waist of her dress, sliding her closer, closer, until she’s almost sitting in his lap. It’s unbearable, and she bites his lip, but not hard, and he pulls back slightly, but she pushes forward again, pressing into him.

It’s worth the wait, and Gaby feels the heat inside of her, slips his hand off her waist and up her thigh, underneath her dress, but then Napoleon clears his throat. Illya jumps back guiltily and Gaby lets out a sigh, dropping her forehead on Illya’s shoulder, her hands still on him, her nails digging sharply into his clothes. 

Napoleon chuckles and says, “Sorry to interrupt, but I think that’s our man leaving through the back door.”

Illya straightens, carefully extracts himself from Gaby, and slips into the crowd, already on the target’s tail. Gaby gives Napoleon a look, which he returns innocently enough, shrugging into his jacket and offering her his arm. 

“You keep interrupting us, and it will never be your turn,” Gaby says, and Napoleon chokes on his next breath. She just smiles at him, ruthlessly, unapologetically, and follows Illya through the dark doors. 

 

 

**V**

 

Napoleon catches a bullet in Sarajevo, just below his collarbone, a clean shot, but it leaves him breathless for longer than it should. He’s in UNCLE’s infirmary for days before Waverly signs off on his release and he slinks away to one of his safehouses, a quaint little rancher in Tulsa. 

It’s winter, and snow has just settled on the ground, and Napoleon sleeps for hours, for days, forgetting to eat, forgetting to drink anything but what he could find in the liquor cabinet in the living room. He drinks and puts record after record on the hi-fi, drinks and reads seamless paperbacks from the study bookshelves, drinks and paints, copies of some of the paintings he’s stolen, whatever he can remember by heart. His brushstrokes are loose, languid, not quite right, and his shoulder aches, and he feels dirty all the time, suffocated, covered in some invisible film that they forgot to remove in the hospital. 

He leaves fingerprints everywhere he goes, in paint, in blood, bathes himself in the snow that falls outside, comes eerily close to winding back up in the hospital again, struggles with a wet cough for weeks. He feels unmoored, adrift. 

He feels alone. 

***

Gaby is the first to break in, smiling up at him one morning from the breakfast table. He doesn’t ask why she’s here, how she’s gotten in, but only because she has coffee laid out on the table next to his pain pill, and he’s never been able to speak before at least one cup. She’s made scrambled eggs and sausage and toast and it’s not as bad as he thought it would be, having tasted her cooking before, so he says, “Thank you,” gruffly, swallowing his meds like a good little boy. 

“I thought you might want something that doesn’t taste like feet.” She smiles, and he rolls his eyes. 

“I thought you would be on a honeymoon with Peril by now,” he says. More than anything, he’s been thinking about this when he goes to bed at night, Illya’s large hands around Gaby’s waist, picking her up and putting her back down on his lap. They had been beautiful in New York, kissing underneath the smoky lights, and every time he closes his eyes, he sees them, Gaby’s hands on Illya’s, pushing his fingers up the slow, smooth skin of her thigh. “Or does UNCLE have policies on this sort of fraternization?”

Gaby makes a face. “Waverly has temporarily reassigned us until you’re off leave. I haven’t seen him since that night.” 

That night, when Illya had carried Napoleon to the car despite Napoleon’s profuse protestations (“This is goddamn embarrassing,” spit between his teeth, and Illya shifting Napoleon’s weight onto him, his stern voice, the sound of gunshots raining behind them, “No option, Cowboy.”) and they had both been covered in Napoleon’s blood, a deep, dark red that had turned to brown on Illya’s shirt sleeve when he and Gaby were waiting in the hospital, afraid to touch each other, afraid to look at anything but the floor. When Waverly had finally called for them, he had told them that Napoleon was out of surgery and alive, and Illya had released a breath that he didn’t know he was holding, and Gaby had felt her eyes well up with tears, hot against her face, and Waverly had looked at both of them, his face blank, and told them that the team might benefit from a holiday. 

“Where is he?” Napoleon asks. 

Gaby says, “In Versailles, no phones.” She looks as worried as Napoleon feels. 

“And you?”

“Finished my assignment last night.” She doesn’t tell him what the assignment was, or how she knew he was here, or how far she had come, but Napoleon doesn’t ask, anyway. She clears the table and pours him another cup of coffee, notices his stiff movements, the way he’s trying not to favor his right shoulder, but ultimately failing, a tiny, bright spot of blood blooming through the back of his white shirt. 

She places her fingers over it, and doesn’t miss Napoleon’s wince. “Where are your medical supplies?” She asks, and he points her to the cabinet underneath the sink. 

It’s only a small tear, but she clucks her tongue and says something demeaning in German. He laughs, and she tells him to stay still as she re-stitches the wound. “You’ll have a scar,” she says softly, and he looks down at his hands, grimacing at the pull of the thread. 

“It’ll match all of the other ones.”

She cleans her hands and grabs a bottle of gin from her bag. 

***

Illya finds them a week later, bruised, a little worse for wear. He has a cut on his cheek that he won’t explain, not that either of them have asked, and he moves slowly, delicately, unsure of himself, unsure of them. When Gaby had opened the door to let him in, he had snow on his collar and he had smelled like cinnamon, like warmth, and Gaby had pressed herself to him and stood on her tiptoes to kiss the corner of his mouth, and he had blushed deeply, his lips turning up into half a smile. 

Napoleon had moved to press against him, too, and Illya had felt large and unassuming, and Napoleon had inhaled deeply and turned his nose to fit into the crook of Illya’s neck and neither of them had moved for the longest moment. And then the clock in the hall had chimed, and Napoleon had pulled back, slowly, and Illya had looked at him, confused as he always was, and Gaby had said, her voice pitched lower than normal, “Come on,” and they had both slid back into the house. 

 

 

**VI**

 

In Melbourne, Gaby finds a tracking device in her shoe. “Napoleon,” she says sweetly after she knocks on his hotel room door, pushing on his chest, forcing him back into the room. “What is this?”

Napoleon takes the tracker from her, holds it up to the light. “Not American-made,” he says, in answer. The shower is on in the bathroom, and Gaby glances over to the open bathroom door, and then back to Napoleon. 

He shrugs, says, “I doubt she had anything to do with it.” He walks over and closes the bathroom door, anyway, doesn’t want an audience to their conversation. “It doesn’t look Russian-made, either, so don’t bother asking Peril.” 

He turns it over and over in his hand. “I don’t think it’s a listening device, but just to be sure,” he drops it in the glass of water on his bedside table. 

“Should we assume we’re compromised?” Gaby asks, her fingers curling tight into her palm, her nails cutting skin. 

Napoleon looks thoughtful, and then shakes his head. “I wouldn’t assume anything. Could be Waverly’s, for all we know.” 

Gaby doesn’t like the sound of that, and opens her mouth to say so, but the shower shuts off and Napoleon places a finger to his lips and ushers Gaby out the door, his palm light on the small of her back. She feels disappointed that Napoleon is still inviting casual flings up to his bedroom at night, and then wonders why she feels disappointed. 

She knocks on Illya’s door, needing something but not knowing what, but he doesn’t answer, and when she picks the lock, she finds him sleeping still, his huff of breath as she walks silently across the carpet. He only wakes up when she lifts the covers and slides into his bed, fully clothed. He lets her arrange him to how she feels comfortable, lets her lay on his chest, her hand slipping into his.

They fall back asleep, warm, and don’t move again until Napoleon wakes them up for breakfast, his fingers brushing softly against Gaby’s cheek. 

 

 

**VII**

 

There’s a tail in Oslo, a slim blonde that Illya has tried to shake at least three times since they arrived. The first time, Napoleon jokes that Illya has an admirer, that someone is trying to pick him up, and Illya scowls. 

Gaby smiles and lays a hand on Illya’s shoulder, says, “Would that be so strange?” 

Illya doesn’t know how to answer. 

The second time, in the restaurant the next night, when they notice him at a corner table reading the same newspaper article for forty minutes and pointedly not looking at them, Napoleon admits that there’s a problem. “Whatever outfit this is,” he says quietly, his voice only for the two of them, “They haven’t hired the brightest recruits.”

Gaby swallows the rest of her wine and places her napkin on the table, and they watch the man shift, get ready to move. “Napoleon,” she says, taking out her cigarette case, “I think I need some air. Would you be so kind as to join me?”

“Of course, darling,” he says, and Illya feels his temperature start to rise at the endearment, the thrush of warmth through his skin. 

The man looks briefly between Illya and Napoleon and Gaby, unsure where to go, who to choose, but he chooses right, sitting up and slipping on his jacket, casually following Napoleon and Gaby out the front door. Illya feels the tension in his fists, the curl of his fingers, the shaking of his hands, and he knows that this will end up in a fight, as it always does, but this time, it will be for the right reasons. 

He makes his way to the door, but when he gets outside, the cool air on his skin, the tail is nowhere to be found. Napoleon says, “Lost ‘em, eh?” and his voice is a murmur as he holds his hands up to block the wind from Gaby’s cigarette. 

Illya says nothing. 

***

The third time, the man catches Illya in a public restroom, and Illya starts to think that maybe Napoleon was right, but as soon as Illya opens his mouth to say, “No, thank you,” the man opens his jacket to pull a gun from his holster. 

“Come with me,” the man says in imperfect, sluggish Russian, and Illya lets out a hollow, cruel sounding laugh. 

The man doesn’t leave the bathroom, but Illya does, with a split lip and two bruised ribs, and when he joins Napoleon and Gaby at the hotel, he tells them that they shouldn’t have any more admirers in Oslo for the time being, and Gaby lifts a hand to his mouth and pulls away with blood on her fingers, and Napoleon gives him a soft, uneasy look, and Illya thinks that this is exactly why he was chosen for this team. 

This is exactly why he’s here. 

 

**VIII**

 

After Oslo, Illya finds a first edition Lolita in his coat pocket. He keeps this one, palms it every now and then, on a plane, on a train ride, at dinner when Napoleon has had a few too many drinks and Gaby is looking at him in a way that could only be described as hungry, and there are too many English words for Illya to catch and it feels like he’s always one step behind. 

He reads it cover to cover, fingers the cracks in the spine, even though Napoleon has already given him the lesson on the importance of preservation, of provenance. As much as he loves his mother homeland, the spirit of collectivity, he relishes his possessions, feels fiercely loyal to what has been given to him, to who has given to him. 

Napoleon catches him with it one evening, while Illya’s waiting on him and Gaby for dinner, and he smiles warmly, proudly. He leans into Illya, his mouth almost touching Illya’s ear, and they both feel the pull of each other, this thing between them that ignites, that burns, and Napoleon says, “Thought you would like that one,” and his breath tickles Illya’s face and they both want to turn into each other, but don’t. 

Illya doesn’t leave it behind when they travel to the next city. 

Illya is a bad communist. 

 

 

**IX**

 

In Denmark, Illya and Napoleon are taken captive. They have both been through this before, both been subjected to torture, to pain, and Napoleon is only too fondly reminded of dear Uncle Rudi’s electric chair. They sit in a small, windowless concrete room for at least a day, handcuffed to the rusty, creaking radiator, and Napoleon passes the time by reciting terrible Russian poetry, trying to make Illya laugh, but never succeeding. 

The men who come into the room wear old Wehrmacht uniforms, fading green and red and black, and Napoleon spits on the floor by their boots and is rewarded with a backhanded slap. He feels the man’s ring cut into his cheek, feels the blood start to well. 

“Him,” the first man says, pointing to Illya. Napoleon fights against the handcuffs, says a couple of choice German phrases he picked up in the Army, but none of them pay any attention to him. 

It takes four men to restrain Illya, a fifth to bound his wrists so tight behind his back that Napoleon hears the crack of one of his shoulders. Illya never makes a sound. 

They don’t make him watch, thankfully, but when they bring Illya back at the end of the day, bloody and unsteady on his feet, cut and bruised and drugged, less skin and more open, raw wounds, Napoleon shuffles over as far as he can go, buries his face in Illya’s collar, tells him that it will be okay, everything will be okay, forgets to say this in English, says it in Russian, instead, says it through tears. 

Illya says, “Whatever you say, Cowboy,” and it must hurt because his voices sounds like he’s been swallowing glass, and Napoleon kisses his throat, and Illya says, “First time should not be like this,” and Napoleon says, “I’m sorry,” and again, “I’m sorry,” and presses his mouth to Illya’s. 

It shouldn’t be like this, but it is, Napoleon pushing into Illya and Illya pushing back, and all Napoleon can taste is metal, the thick smell of blood all around him, and they both want to reach out and touch each other, hold each other, but neither can break through the restraints. “I’m sorry,” Napoleon says again when he pulls away, and Illya smiles, a fresh cut splitting open the corner of his mouth, and says, “Kiss me again, Cowboy.”

And he does. 

***

They start with the soles of his feet. It’s quick, dirty work, and their gloves are covered in the dark, red blood that Illya sheds, and it looks like a film, chocolate syrup, Kensington Gore, and nobody’s laughing, so Illya does, loud enough that it hurts, loud enough that he can’t hear anything else. 

They feed him drugs to make him compliant, ask him his name, his rank, ask him about UNCLE, about Gaby and Napoleon, and Illya forgets to lie and tells them simple, innocuous things instead. He describes the fat, orange tabby that his mother took in when Illya was little, the stripes on its tail and the way Illya would make kissing sounds and the cat would come running. He tells them about the first time he taught Gaby how to play chess, about how her hair had slid into her face and about how Napoleon had brushed it back for her, his fingertips dotting her collarbone. 

They push needles underneath his fingernails, and he tells them about the way his mother used to sing to him at night, her soft voice and the melodic tunes that he still knows to this day, that he hums sometimes in the shower or in the kitchen, that make Gaby pause and smile without ever knowing why. 

He starts to drift, and they hit him once, twice, the pain that blooms on his cheeks, and he tells them about the first time he ever killed a man because he couldn’t control who he is, because he let the rage overtake him, because he couldn’t stop the trembling of his fists. The men in uniform look bored with this - it’s all in his file - but he pushes on, tells them that afterwards - afterwards - the man (boy, really, a boy within Illya’s own unit who had bullied him constantly, spit in his food, knocked over his chess pieces, called his mother names that even Illya would never repeat) had looked so bruised that no one could tell the color of his skin. That afterwards Illya had cried in the KGB barracks and no one had come to his side, no one had even asked him if he was alright. 

They cut his heels, his palms, the skin around his knees. They bound his wrists tight enough that Illya stops feeling his fingers. They give him drugs, more drugs, to keep him awake, to help him fall asleep, to keep him lucid, to keep him dreaming 

Afterwards, “Afterwards,” Illya says in Russian, “I was commended. I was pushed up the ranks. I was promoted.”

They turn up the heat, make him sweat through his clothes, turn it back down again, and his teeth chatter so much that he bites his own tongue. The blood tastes normal in his mouth, something to get used to. 

And afterwards - afterwards - Illya says through broken teeth, through the ruin of his mouth, Illya says, I couldn’t even look my mother in the eye for almost a whole year. 

The men threaten to sew his mouth shut. 

***

The next day, they take Illya again, amazed at his resilience. They experiment with tools, with drugs, and when they deposit him back into the cell, not even bothering to restrain him again, he feels like he’s on fire, like his mind is dislocated from his body. He doesn’t move fast enough before he vomits, and it’s all over him, his clothes, and his eyes flutter shut and someone is calling his name, but he feels too slow to answer, too far away. 

Someone says, “Illya,” and it sounds loud in his ear, too loud, and he reaches out, his fingers throbbing with his pulse, meets the cool air, but nothing else, can feel the warmth of someone just out of reach. It’s his name again, and he opens his eyes and Napoleon swims into view. 

Illya says something in Russian, something that falls from his tongue, says the name of his mother, says the name of his father, and Napoleon is looking at him in a way that Illya’s never seen before, this naked look of worry, of pain. “Gaby?” Illya manages through the weight of his tongue. 

“Gaby was never here,” Napoleon says, and tries to reach for Illya again, but is too far away, hands too tightly secured. “Gaby is fine. Do you know what they gave you, Illya?” 

He’s worried that he’s talked, Illya can tell from the way he’s forming his words, the soft tone of his voice. He’s worried that Illya is as useless as Illya feels, he’s worried that Illya has betrayed them all. 

Illya closes his eyes again, and Napoleon keeps talking, keeps saying his name, trying to keep him awake. “I will get us out of here, Cowboy,” Illya says, and then he vomits again, feels the bile and blood that slides up his throat, feels like a fever, feels like a ghost. 

I did not say anything important, he doesn’t say. 

I did not tell them anything. 

One of his mother’s songs comes to him, something small, something reassuring, and he tries to work it through his teeth, tries to hum, just so Napoleon will know that everything will be alright, just so Napoleon will know that Illya will get them out of this, but he can’t move, and it dies inside his throat. 

Napoleon says his name one more time, but Illya doesn’t even hear it. 

***

Napoleon breaks his thumb in order to slide out of the handcuffs. It’s a nice, clean break, and should heal up fine in a few weeks, but he doesn’t even care as he hovers over Illya, as he places his good hand on his face, his neck. Napoleon lets out a deep breath when he finds a pulse, feels like crying, and sticks two fingers into his mouth, tries to clean Illya’s airway, tries to help him breathe easier than the short, ragged breaths that he’s taking now. 

He tries to heft him up, tries to lift him over to the door, but Illya is deadweight, heavy, solid. “Fuck,” Napoleon says, and glances to the door. He decides on a different tactic, drags Illya across the floor and into the opposite corner, away from sight. He cradles Illya’s head and kisses his hair and thinks Gaby will come, thinks it over and over again, thinks it until he believes it. 

And he waits. 

***

The footsteps wake him the next morning. Illya is still asleep, cradled against Napoleon, and he slides out from under him and hunches by the door, nothing in his hands. He will kill whoever comes in the door, kill them with anything he can reach. 

The door creaks open, slowly, and Napoleon almost leaps out, almost jumps and claws and scratches his way out, if it weren’t for Gaby staring at him in the doorway. Gaby with tears in her eyes and a relieved smile on her face, Gaby saying sweetly, quietly, “There you are.”

The best thing that Napoleon has ever heard in his life. 

As he reaches for her, as he buries his fingers in her hair, finds her mouth with his, he thinks that this is the worst place in the world for a first kiss. He hears Illya’s words in his head, presses tighter, never wants to let go. 

 

**X**

 

Illya spends two unconscious weeks in the infirmary. Napoleon and Gaby are there for days in the beginning, waiting for the swelling in his brain to subside, waiting for him to wake up, playing chess during the day, Gaby with a hand on Illya’s knee, Napoleon wanting to touch, but never stepping close enough. 

They sleep together at night, because it’s easy, because it’s hard not to, and Napoleon wonders how Illya will feel when he wakes up and sees them together, wonders how this will work, wonders if it will work, Napoleon and Gaby and illya, wonders if they’re doing the right thing, wonders if somewhere along the line something happened that shouldn’t have. 

He kisses Gaby and it feels like coming home, her dark hair in his hands, on his throat, slipping down her back. He kisses Gaby and it feels like he should have been doing this a long time ago, her mouth on his chest, on his stomach, climbing down his hips. They fuck and they talk, about him, about her, about everything except Illya, who is always there, even when they try not to think about him, even when Gaby starts to cry and Napoleon says her name in the way Illya would, the soft, swollen word on his lips. 

They listen to his records and read his books and Napoleon puts on one of Illya’s shirts once and pretends that he can still smell him, and Gaby catches him in it and looks at him for one long moment before pushing him back against the wall, hard, making short work of his pants, fucking him while they’re both still standing. Her hands are furious on him, her nails tearing at his skin, biting his mouth while he bites her back, and this is desperation, this is worry, her teeth on the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, his fist on her back, but it’s all they have. They leave fingerprints on each other in bruises, blue and purple and green, one near the corner of her mouth, another just below his ribcage. 

They leave marks, they leave scars, something to match all of the others. 

***

He’s not dead, but it’s a near thing, touch and go for twelve hours, Waverly sighing with his hands in his pockets, Napoleon’s skin ashen underneath the hospital lights. He had been given a cast for his broken thumb, white plaster of paris that wrapped around and around his arm, and Gaby had written in German along the side, in Russian, and Napoleon had made a joke about using it to knock some sense into Illya and Gaby had rolled her eyes and it had felt like normal for one, two, seconds before the doctors had come out and told them that Illya might never wake up. 

***

Three days turns into eight turns into eleven, and Napoleon brushes his lips agains Illya’s cheekbone and whispers, “Wake you, you fucking commie,” his voice broken, betrayed, desperate, but of course Illya never does. 

Gaby tickles the bottoms of his feet, once split open, raw, but now healed. She pulls his hair, she slaps his face, she kisses him harder than she’s ever kissed anyone, comes away with blood in her mouth. 

They scream sometimes, long and loud. 

Illya never even moves. 

***

The fourteenth day, Illya wakes up for one brief moment, Napoleon turning the newspaper over and catching Illya’s bleary eyes staring at him, half-closed, heavy-lidded. He blinks, looks around, and then falls back into the pillow below him. 

Napoleon says, “Peril?” and he doesn’t even sound like himself. 

Illya falls back asleep. 

***

The next time, Gaby is with him, placing cold hands on his naked chest. He opens his eyes and she smiles at him, and he says, “Please, Chop Shop Girl,” and she leans down to kiss him, even though he only meant for her to warm up her hands first. 

He kisses back, his mouth dry, feeling like cotton, and she says, “We’ve missed you,” and it sounds blurry, emotional. He doesn’t remember much, only pain and blood and the feel of Napoleon’s lips on his in a small, dark room, close enough to fantasy that he thinks he might have imagined it. 

“Cowboy?” He asks, and Gaby blinks back tears at the torn, open words, the way it sounds when it escapes his mouth, and she buries her hands in Illya’s blanket, straightening it around him. 

“He’s fine,” she says. “Broken thumb, couple of bruises, not nearly as bad as you.”

Illya hums for a moment, a tuneless noise. “I did not say anything,” he says. “I gave them nothing.”

Gaby looks at him for a moment, her face darkening. “Of course not.” She holds his hand between both of hers. “We never thought you did.”

Illya thinks, yes. Thinks, yes, you did, but only because he can see it in the way she swallows, her throat moving up and down, the way she tilts her head away from him, always the tell, the way she moves her fingers across the back of his hand, the way she runs her tongue across her lips. 

He thinks, yes, yes you did, but only because if Gaby hadn’t, if Gaby had believed in him, she wouldn’t have told him so. 

He lifts his mouth into a reluctant smile, lets her kiss him one last time. 

***

The next morning, Illya disappears. 

 

**XI**

 

Waverly takes it as leave, tells Napoleon and Gaby that they have three weeks to find him before he declares Illya AWOL and alerts the KGB to his disappearance. They don’t take it as a challenge; it was never a game. 

***

They lose him in Cairo, among the modern day merchants. They pick up his trail in Morocco, and then in Ceylon, finding a crude shelter in an abandoned temple. On the cold, crumpled blanket on the ground, Napoleon finds the copy of Lolita that he had given to him, dog-eared and well-worn. He slips it into his pocket, tells Gaby, “He’ll want this back when we find him.”

Even to his own ears, he sounds unsure. 

***

They chase him around the States for awhile: fallout shelters, churches, filling stations; Montana, Nebraska, Utah; an apartment leased under Napoleon’s name that Napoleon had never seen, in a tiny town in Pennsylvania, where Napoleon hovers his fingers over the art on the walls, the black and white keys of the piano, the (warm) bedspread, and wonders what it would feel like if this was his life. They stay there for a couple days, but only because when they had broken in, food was still steaming on the table and the hope that swelled had been overwhelming, had stopped them in their tracks. 

Gaby sees him in a pub in Ireland, across the room, where he looks gruff and tired, and she opens her mouth to say his name, but he only smiles at her, sadly, a ghost of his former self. Someone bumps into her, places a warm hand on her arm in apology, and when she looks up again, Illya’s gone. 

***

Time runs out. 

Napoleon sends a letter to an old address, a dead drop. In it, between the perfunctory hellos and how-do-you-dos, he writes, I hear Mother lost a painting last week. He leaves a phone number, a (fake) address, and his (real) name. 

And he waits. 

 

**XII**

 

The KGB reports of Illya’s demise. 

On the day of the (dry, militaristic) funeral, Gaby opens the door to Napoleon’s flat in London and finds Illya sitting at the kitchen table. He doesn’t turn, even when Napoleon comes up the stairs with a bag of groceries in his hands and stops just inside the door behind her, both of them silent and excited and scared, both of them relieved. Illya doesn’t look at either of them, but only because he’s staring straight ahead at the painting on the wall. 

Gaby swallows once, wants so badly to go to him, to feel his skin beneath her fingers, but doesn’t. Napoleon shuts the door and sets the groceries down on the counter, the soft sound echoing once. 

“In Moscow, at Tretyakov Gallery, there has been report of burglary,” Illya says, his hands folded together. He never moves, never looks at them. “Guards report only one painting stolen.”

Gaby looks between them, confused, and then at the painting on the wall. It’s the same ugly one from the hotel in Istanbul. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. 

“Troubled,” Illya says. “Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinsky.” 

Napoleon hums, his mouth closed. 

“Thought you did not like socialist painters, Cowboy.”

Napoleon laughs, and it’s a bright sound in the space between the three of them. “It grew on me,” he says, which is as real an answer as they will ever get. The painting is dark in the room, disjointed, and it is not so much beautiful as it is poignant. 

Gaby sits down at one of the chairs, her hand close to Illya’s, flat on the surface of the table. He looks at her finally, and she feels elated all at once, able to see him and know that he’s alive, that he’s here, able to know that he’s alright. He looks a little rough around the edges, tired, but when she reaches out to place her hand on his arm, he lets her. 

“What are we going to do with you?” she says in Russian, and Illya smiles back at her. 

“You’ve been practicing.” 

She nods and holds his hand, and Napoleon comes close to them, places a palm on the back of Illya’s neck. Illya thinks, they think, that this is exactly where they belong, this is exactly where they are supposed to end up, and as Illya looks up at Napoleon, leans back into his touch, he finally feels like he’s home. 

Gaby kisses him first, her lips soft and glossy and warm. 

Napoleon kisses him after that, pliant, the thumb without the cast tracing the expanse of Illya’s cheekbone. 

Illya says, “Thank you,” for this, for them, for asking him to come home. 

Illya says, “Please,” please stay here, please stay with me. 

Illya says, “Kiss me,” with his lips, with his tongue, with his teeth, and they do, they do, Napoleon and Gaby each reaching out and gripping him, exploring him, shedding first his clothes and then theirs, walking him to the bedroom, never letting him out of their sight, never letting him out of their touch, and he pulls in breath after breath and they say his name, softly, slowly, and nothing is missed. 

They consume him, and he asks for more. 

***

The next morning, Napoleon brings them coffee in bed and Gaby bites Illya’s shoulder and scolds Napoleon when he spills on the sheets, and Illya feels warm between them, content, and Napoleon leaves the bedroom door open enough that Illya can just see the edge of the gilt frame on the wall, the trail of gold that melts into black, and Illya sighs guiltily and says, “Tomorrow, the painting goes back. No questions.”

And Napoleon laughs out loud and tells him that he will do anything that Illya wants, and Gaby makes a scoffing sound at that, and all three of them fall back into bed, their limbs obscuring each other, and none of them move the next day or the day after that. 

The painting stays.


End file.
